Boston Flora

Category: Author Book Signing

  • Saturday, March 5, 2:00 pm – At Home in the 365-Day Garden

    On the last day of 2007, Margaret Roach made the life-altering decision to walk away from New York City and her job as EVP/Editorial Director of Martha Stewart, a career many would describe as highly successful. But she craved completely different rewards: solitude, a return to the personal creativity of writing, and a closer connection to nature and her first passion, the garden she had been making on weekends for 20 years. She moved to a rural New York State town of 300, began AWayToGarden.com (called “the best garden blog” by The New York Times and named for her prize-winning 1989 book), and wrote her dropout memoir, And I Shall Have Some Peace There. On Saturday, March 5, beginning at 2 pm, Ms. Roach will discuss how you can have a visually exciting landscape every day of the year – if you know what to plant, and also (just as important) how to “see”. As on her website, she’ll deliver both “horticultural how-to and woo-woo”, encouraging not only the smart use of great plants but also an intimate connection between the gardener and the garden, even in its most subtle moments. Copies of And I Shall Have Some Peace There will be available for purchase and signing after the lecture. The program will take place at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, 11 French Drive in Boylston, and there is a $15 charge for THBG members, $20 for non-members. For more information, and to register, log on to www.towerhillbg.org.

  • Thursday, March 3, 8:00 am – 8:30 pm – 17th Annual ELA Conference and Eco-Marketplace

    ELA brings together all of the essential information on rain gardens that really work, healthy soils for healthy trees, plant choices for food productive landscapes, and more at the 17th Annual ELA Conference and Eco-Marketplace on Thursday, March 3 from 8 am – 8:30 pm. Co-hosted by the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, New England Wild Flower Society, NOFA Organic Land Care Program, Society for Ecological Restoration, New England Chapter, and the Ecological Landscaping Association. Panelists include William Cullina, Dr. Peter Del Tredici, and Jono Neiger, three leading experts in the field of plant selection, who will share their unique perspectives on Native, Introduced, Invasive, and Endangered Plants in the Landscape: Untangling the Roots of the Problem. Visit www.ecolandscaping.org for online registration, or call Penny Lewis at 617-436-5838. The conference will take place at the MassMutual Center in Springfield. Rooms at the Sheraton Springfield Monarch Place Hotel are available to participants for $109/night. Complete package (not including hotel) for members of one of the sponsors is $170 before 2/15, $225 after 2/15; non members $190/$245.

  • Wednesday, March 30, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Working with Stone: Creating a Connection with the Spirit of Place

    Rescheduled from February 1 due to snow. The gardener’s perspective is the perfect loci for seeking inward and reaching outward, for ordering the experience of time and space, and observing higher orders.  Dan Snow is a designer of outdoor spaces in stone, and an art maker specializing is dry stone constructions.  He is the author of In the Company of Stone and Listening to Stone—Hardy Structures, Perilous Follies, and Other Tangles with Nature and the subject of the PBS documentary Stone Rising.  Working solo to build garden walls and dry stone features, Master Craftsman Dan Snow finds that the most successful designs are born of an intimate relationship with the landscape and knowledge and understanding of the materials at hand. Dan’s presentation will examine the many uses of stone in the garden; how stone can support a garden design, or simply be the garden itself. Illustrated with images of his work, the presentation will also explore the “give and take” experience of working in nature, and the connection to spirit expressed through stone.  Book-signing to follow. Co-sponsored by Trinity Church and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.

    The lecture and reception will now take place Wednesday, March 30, beginning at 7 pm. Tickets $20 member, $25 non member, available at The Shop at Trinity (206 Clarendon Street, lower level), by phone (617.536.0944 x225) or online arboretum.harvard.edu. Questions: Kathy Acerbo-Bachmann, 617.536.0944 x217 or kacerbobachmann@trinitychurchboston.org.  The beautiful photo below of Dan Snow’s work in Vermont is by Peter Mauss.

  • Saturday, February 19, 1:30 pm – Nature Revisited

    The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s Landscape Visions Lectures continue Saturday, February 19, beginning at 1:30 pm in the Kotzen Meeting Center, Lefavour Hall, Simmons College, with Amale Andraos, co-founder of WORKac, NYC, speaking on Nature Revisited.

    Today, in the face of global urbanization, exploding population, and shrinking resources, architecture, cities, and nature are at a crossroads. Moving beyond the binary—white or green, architecture or landscape, urban or rural—we must ask how we can reinvent nature for the twenty-first century. Andraos examines recent projects by WORKac that shed light on the current situation and suggest a new course for the future.

    Based in New York City, WORKac develops architectural and urban projects that engage culture and consciousness, nature and artificiality, surrealism and pragmatism. WORKac is involved in projects at all scales, ranging from a master plan for the new BAM cultural district in Brooklyn, to a single family villa in Inner Mongolia, China. Recent completed projects include the installation ‘Public Farm 1’ at PS1/MoMA and the new headquarters for Diane von Furstenberg. Current work includes the new Kew Gardens Hills Library in Queens, the extension of the Clark Art Institute at Mass MoCA, a new Children’s Museum for the Arts, and the first Edible Schoolyard New York City with Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation.

    Amale Andraos is a visiting professor at Princeton University’s School of Architecture and has taught at numerous institutions including Harvard and Columbia Universities, the University of Pennsylvania, Parsons School of Design, and the American University in Beirut. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon. She has lived in Saudi Arabia, France, Canada and the Netherlands prior to moving to New York in 2002. She currently serves on the Architectural League of New York’s Board of Directors.  Tickets ($15 general public, $12 seniors, $5 members, students free) are available on line at www.gardenermuseum.org.  You will also find directions to the Kotzen Meeting Center on the site.

  • Saturday, February 19, 2:00 pm – At Home in the 365-Day Garden

    Berkshire Botanical Garden presents noted author Margaret Roach on Saturday, February 19, (snow date February 20) 2 pm, at Monument Mountain Regional High School, Great Barrington, MA, for the 2011 Winter Lecture, “At Home in the 365-Day Garden.”

    Margaret will discuss her own gardening journey – highlighting personal experiences leading to the creation of a beautiful, year-round landscape. She will present slides of plants and vistas of her own inspirational garden to illustrate her approach to making a non-stop, year-round garden along with sprinklings of her unique and irreverent sense of humor. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet the woman behind the highly successful garden blog, Awaytogarden.com, where she provides informative posts, photos, links, and whimsical meanderings from her 2.3 acre zone 5B garden in the neighboring Hudson Valley.

    This lecture also marks the debut of Margaret’s memoir, And I Shall Have Some Peace There, documenting her transition from working at high-powered jobs in Manhattan, (Martha Stewart Living, New York Times, Newsday), to living full time in the country, reinventing her life, and creating a 365-day garden. A recent gold-star rating by Kirkus Reviews describes And I Shall Have Some Peace There as “a moving, eloquent and joyously idiosyncratic memoir.” A reception and book signing will follow the lecture.

    Proceeds from the Winter Lecture support Berkshire Botanical Garden’s popular Horticulture Certificate Program and other Education Programs, which provide hands-on workshops and classes to children and adults year-round. Additional information on education programs can be obtained through the Garden’s web site, www.berkshirebotanical.org.

    Tickets to the lecture are: $35 Garden Members / $42 non-members, and group discounts are available. Seating is limited and reservations are required. For more information and to reserve tickets, call Berkshire Botanical Garden at 413 298 3926, or visit the web site, www.berkshirebotanical.org.

  • Saturday, January 8, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Wachusett: How Boston’s 19th Century Quest for Water Changed Four Towns and a Way of Life

    The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s program theme this year, “Water, Water Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink,” could have inspired author Eamon McCarty Earls and his presentation at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, 11 French Drive, Boylston, Massachusetts on Saturday, January 8, from 1 pm – 2 pm.  He will discuss his new book on the history of Wachusett Reservoir – Wachusett: How Boston’s 19th Century Quest for Water Changed Four Towns and a Way of Life.  Mr. Earls became interested in the Wachusett Reservoir after a visit a few years ago and began his research when he learned there wasn’t really too much else published about it.  He mined information in local historical societies and libraries, and the result is this interesting and very readable book.  Please join the Tower Hill staff as he discusses his work and shares some of the maps and images in the Tower Hill Library (which overlooks Wachusett Reservoir, as it happens.)  Copies of the book will be available for purchase.  The program is free with admission, and there is a snow date of January 22.  For directions and more information, log on to www.towerhillbg.org.

  • May 9 – May 16, 2011 – Gardens of New York City, the Hudson River Valley, & the Hamptons

    Join Pacific Horticulture Board member Greg Graves on a fabulous trip visiting riverside estates in New York, May 9 – 16, 2011. In New York City, see the Metropolitan Museum’s exquisite Cloister Garden, innovative community and pocket gardens, exciting new developments along the harbor, and attend a theater evening. Enjoy private guided visits to Wave Hill’s 28 acres of exuberant plantings overlooking the Hudson River, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Vanderbilt Mansion with spectacular views of Newport Harbor, Rockefeller’s lovely Kykuit Estate, and attend a special luncheon at the Culinary Institute. We have coveted invitations to private gardens designed by Richard Hartlage, and two artists’ gardens in the Hamptons; Madoo, Robert Dash’s ever-changing masterpiece, subject of his book, and Jack Larsen’s Longhouse Reserve, housing great sculpture and ethnic art.

    For more information please contact:
    Sterling Tours – New York
    (619) 299-3010
    http://sterlingtoursltd.com/NewYork2011.html

  • Friday, January 21, 9:30 am – 4:30 pm – Walls and Steps, Garden Structures and Decks

    The Arnold Arboretum, in conjunction with the Landscape Institute of the Boston Architectural College, will hold a morning and an afternoon class on Friday, January 21, with Landscape Architect Scott Scarfone, principal and founder of Oasis Design Group, a landscape and architectural design firm in Baltimore, Maryland.  He is the author of Professional Planting Design – An Architectural and Horticultural Approach for Creating Mixed Bed Plantings, published by John Wiley & Sons.

    In the first session, held from 9:30 am – 12:30 pm, you will learn about Walls and Steps – Design and Construction. In this class you will consider the various design opportunities that walls and steps provide and the proper construction techniques that ensure that the resulting structures are safe, secure, and built to withstand the effects of time. Structural issues and consideration for safety as it relates to wall foundations, earth retention, risers, treads, and landings will be discussed. The fee for this session is $45.

    In the second session, Garden Structures and Decks – Design and Construction, beginning at 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm, more construction issues will be addressed.  Building principles for trellises, pergolas, arbors, small buildings, and decks are fundamentally similar. You will learn about basic and detailed construction techniques for footings, post and beam construction, treillage and roofs, as well as railings as applied to decks and garden pavilions. Scott will show a variety of examples and lead discussion of design and construction techniques. The fee for this session is also $45.  You may sign up for either or both sessions.  The classes will be held at Boston Architectural College, and you may sign up on line at www.arboretum.harvard.edu, or by calling 617-384-5277.

  • Saturday, December 11, 2:00 pm – Eden on the Charles

    The Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford Street in Cambridge, will host author Michael Rawson, whose book Eden on the Charles, The Making of Boston, will be available for purchase and signing on Saturday, December 11 at 2 pm following his speech. The cost of the lecture is free with museum admission. For more information, call 617-495-3045, or log on to www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

    In his latest book, Eden on the Charles (Harvard University Press), author Michael Rawson provides a new environmental perspective on the creation of one of America’s first cities. Rawson will explore how early Bostonians led the nation in urbanization, and how various class and ethnic groups brought rival ideas of nature and competing visions of a “city upon a hill” to the process—and were forced to conform their goals to the realities of Boston’s distinctive natural setting.

  • Wednesday, December 1, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Amy Cotler

    Slow Food BU is hosting author Amy Cotler at the George Sherman Union Building, Boston University Central, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, On Wednesday, December 1,  from 7 – 8:30 pm.  Amy writes:

    “I have been a chef, culinary educator, farm to table and school advocate for almost 3 decades. I have a Farm to School book that has been distributed free to every district in the state and is free on my website. I began my career with my colleague Robyn Van En, the founder of the CSA movement in North America and have been working towards a better food system ever since, founding the non-profit Berkshire Grown, coordinating farm to restaurant work for the Chefs Collaborative and much more.  I will be doing a speaking and book signing from my book, The Locavore Way, which is a comprehensive guide for everyone to seeking out and savoring local food, as well as becoming an advocate in your community. To find out more, visit my website and local food recipes blog at : http://www.amycotler.com.”